[modi123_1]

I caught this little gem in the news this morning.

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The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reveals that archeologists from the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have discovered a secret hideaway which was the burial site of the very unicorn ridden by King Tongmyeong, the founding father of the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo (37 BC-668 AD).

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In case you forgot who Tongmyeong was..

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According to legend, Tongmyeong was born from an egg impregnated by sunlight (so of course he commuted by unicorn).

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Oh, so this isn't new..

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The news agency seems partial to magical news. Past reports have noted that deceased leader Kim Jong-il was born under a double rainbow, he once stopped a blizzard with his bare hands, and even more miraculously, once shot 11 holes in one in a single golf outing — even though he was apparently born from human parents, rather than an egg and sunbeams.

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Also: http://www.kcna.co.j...21129-20ee.html


I got me thinking about regional and urban legends... and their awesomeness. Be it a Jersey Devil, Sasquatch, the treasure at Oak Island, or a unicorn's burial - they all color the areas we live in. Being we are such a diverse crowd of folk what are some of the more unique and interesting tales from where you are or grew up?

Some from the area are... a great aunt always told us going scarecrows came to life and snatched up kids in the full moon... then there's a bunch of "Black Angel" myths about why this statue is black and touching it on certain nights means you'll die in a week.

Obligatory movie posters:

Spoiler

[DarenR]

Though those are some good movies, I would have to say Korea is wrong since I own the only unicorn ever to exist. At least that is what my little pony tells me.

[modi123_1]

Wait, are you a brony too?

[DarenR]

0mfg-- someone actually likes my little pony--- wtf

[xclite]

Nice coverup.

I feel like they could at least *try* to make their propaganda believable.

[modi123_1]

Side note - I performed a wedding at Castle Unicorn. google map. It was pretty boss.

[DarenR]

modi123_1, on 03 December 2012 - 12:55 PM, said:

Side note - I performed a wedding at Castle Unicorn. google map. It was pretty boss.

What you were wearing the unicorn outfit? or the my little pony one?

[depricated]

DarenR, on 03 December 2012 - 10:39 AM, said:

0mfg-- someone actually likes my little pony--- wtf

Join the herd!

[modi123_1]

Naw.. just my typical black pinstripe suite that I was not trying to sweat through in the eighty degree afternoon. My unicorn hoodie was at the cleaners.

[Sergio Tapia]

Down here we have so many.

1. El Duende - A little gnome thing that lures children out into the fields and plays with kids. He loves braiding hair and sometimes in the morning we found horses with their entire manes braided in very intricate patterns.




2. El Wajojo - A bird that omens death and suffering. You hear this and you better run your ass off and leave your current location. It's name derives from the sound it makes, unique: "waaaa jo jo jooooo"

3. La Viudita

4. El Pata de Cabra

Supposedly Satan himself shows up in backwater roads and counties.


---

tl:dr; I stay the fuck out of the country. Plus, I've had my share of paranormal experiences, I believe in these things because I have personally witnessed some of them.

[Robin19]

Cow tipping.

[Xupicor]

I was born and lived most of my life in a small village. Believe it or not, folks there were not all that stupid.
Still, one of the "village legends" told sometimes to small kids is about not going alone to the field at night, because you can get "lost". Presumably some people go "missing" when walking around their land, even though they were born there and know it better than the back of their hand.
They say these people caught (verbatim translation) "an error", and walk around but can't find their way. (It doesn't really sound all that better in Polish, so yeah).
I say they caught too much (verbatim translation) "of vodka".

Other than that I can't really remember anything specific to my village. Well, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure it's even that local of a thing.

[Choscura]

Korea's acting weird about dead things? That's Thailand's fault, actually.


More of this is true than you'd think. A lot more is true than many Asian countries will admit, unless it's flattering. Baavgai can probably give more insight about the naked/screaming/weapons/bottles thing than I can.

Spoiler

Seriously, the whole 'of legend' thing in Korea is the fault of the Kingdom of SiriyoThai sending Som Tam (above, linked text) to Korea, as a gesture of good will and act of diplomacy, despite the King of Siriyothai not fully understanding the concept of food spoiling- perhaps due to the royal lineage that gave him access to the best food within hundreds of miles on a whim, without pay, at any time of the day. The resulting fermented mass, which the messengers, envoys, and sailors tried valiantly to preserve by wrapping it in fibrous leaves, was nonetheless presented as the 'ancient salad of legend' from the chamber pot it had been left to rot in, and the Koreans have never since ceased eating Kimchi- their word for the dish- since the lash shrimp shell was hastily brushed aside from a mouthful of three-month old orange cabbage that smelled slightly of fish and lime as it clung, ashamed, to the bottom of a spoon it did not feel fit to be eaten from.

And so it was that, in the dawn of the Mongol empire, Korea and Thailand established meaningful relations together, sealing their mutual friendship with a feast that subsequently severed relations with Japan and ended with invasion and occupation for several hundred years- which began subsequent to the mongolian horde arriving at their doorstepe, demanding sex, and wanting to know what that delicious smell could possibly be, and if they could please try some?

The subsequent chapters of history are filled with tales of woe as mongols went too far west and got curry instead of Som Tam, too far east and got Tofu instead of meat, and too far north and never came back to tell if there was anything delicious, although the others all suspected that a golden river of garlic had been found, and so after a brief foray into Thailand, they left their ponies and headed back on foot to a country they occupied- which nonetheless charged them rent and fees for wear and tear on the roads, walls, and the deaths of, in roughly this order- emperors, politicians, concubines, livestock, chickens and waterfowl, and also for deaths of citizens, and they wandered back to their hills, which they largely haven't left since then, and in which they can still be seen riding ponies too small for any self-respecting conqueror who nonetheless get the job done with enough prodding, and occasionally can be found running naked and shouting to their gods among the hills, apparently an ancient religious ceremony involving the deadliest weapons that can be found, any target that can be discerned among four identical shifting copies of itself, and foul-smelling drinks from glass bottles or cans.

The King of SiriyoThai, long since dead, was declared successful in all endeavors by his successor, who never had the chance to accept the gifts of Kimchi sent by the Koreans in response; the koreans, deprived of good breath and with their most beautiful women carried away, became widely known as both the ugliest and angriest Asians around, referred to almost exclusively as "Angry garlic-eating motherfuckers" by the Japanese as they ignored the mongol attempts at boating and subsequently swimming towards a beachhead in Japan, only bothering once the archers had run out of arrows to cheer on the new development of watching small strangers and ponies trying to swim away towards open ocean in the hope that they could reach land beyond it, or at least a shark that wasn't a Japanese arrow or Korean breath. And while nobody was looking, the Thai people took Taiwan as their own and expelled the white people living peacefully there already, declaring that this would be the country for Thais, and in their enthusiasm, producing a linguistic typo the way only southern Chinese subgroups can and named it "Thai!!1one", later transcribed as "Tie one!", and eventually as "Taiwan", serving as the second gateway to southern China to be operated by the same group since the deal with outsourcing to India all technology work, decoration, and exercise ended with the continuing debacle of monastic orders dedicated to peace and harmony that could slay armies with brooms and paintbrushes while calmly sipping tea, which was further rationalized by the assertion that those smelly dahl-eaters used too much color anyway, a problem the Chinese artists set about fixing by washing all color out of existing indian works, and which was further improved by the mandatory showing of teeth of evil or ferocious characters, many of which also inexplicably were given horns or tusks to demonstrate their.... non-indianness.

And then white people brought tobacco, non-cultural racism, and the ability to smoke opium and fucked everything up: the status quo had been great for the only people capable of talking about it without dying horrible deaths in basements at the hands of disputors to their claims, and that all ended toot-sweet when the East India company started exploiting the hell out of the exact systems that had been used by kings and monastic orders to exploit the hell out of the rest of the population, which of course was complained about, by the kings, mainly to each other, as they had all been occupied under the pretext of being barbarian lands, and none could prove that they were not except for Siam, which (cleverly) used a flag that (cleverly) wasn't white, to the (fortunately) french 'discoverers' of their lands, who were sufficiently impressed, after only one or two rounds of being trounced in the local sport of 'cracking skulls with elbows while screaming', to both not attempt an invasion (and convince the British to do the same), and also to begin the newest french sport of the time, Savate, in an attempt to not be trounced again by small screaming brown people half the size of any taker the french put forward. Once had been enough.

Holy shit that turned into a wall. Very quickly, the bits about Som Tam in Korea, korean breath, and pre-keyboard english Typoes about 'Thai!1one' and so on are made up, and so is the idea of outsourcing to India in general, but this does somewhat accurately reflect some of the history of the region... which might give you an idea, looking at the strange details, why North Korea both honestly believes in unicorns, and why they think it's a big deal who's ass the unicorn would have worn as a silly hat hanging off it's head by the lanyards under its chin or in its mouth. So if that's the case, somebody should call the east India company again and tell them they aren't done yet, and this time the locals have better drugs and need basic commodities for them.

Seriously, the mongols did that in korea, they tried to do it in japan (severing ties between here and there), they came here (to my city, even, and got turned away by mosquitoes, humidity, and south-asian building methods that could withstand them indefinitely while giving fire positions to the beseiged... and so on. Even the bit about Tai people splitting up is true, Taiwan really is at least historically a Tai country, and the people there before them really were white, although that goes back a ways.

in other words, there is nothing new under the sun, and I bet the unicorn has been brought up and dismissed in some situations described here as well.

again, this is a fucking wall, but if people want dates, names, kingdoms and so on, I can probably put a good number in from memory, and the rest you can find with a bit of linguistic googling (trick is to translate something, translate back, and list all close translations in the translation box to see how shit works out before attempting a Google). It's fascinating stuff, and I didn't even touch the bizarre parts like polygamous marriages which subsequently became gay marriages out of a desire to be fashionable in Thailand and China, for example, or the history of transexuals throughout asia and the roles they played until the arrival of Christian misionaries, notably the Jesuits in Japan from the 1500's onward, and the advances made in both india and China that continue today that are hampered by (but also fuelled by) class divisions or caste-system impositions. I may be rabidly anti-religion, but I can make a pretty good case for the good work of missionaries, and cite many examples of it, including the introduction of literacy, over several generations, to an entire section of the world that had never experienced any kind before, their own or otherwise, and which, even by conservative estimates, includes millions of people in southern china throughout burma and laos, and hundreds of thousands more in Thailand.

The point, before anybody forgets (including me) is to show how these people think, because it's enough more complex than western thought that as a result of being exposed to it, even I pick up on hints from westerners now- despite never having noticed them before. So the deal, here, with Korea, is not simply that they are making a claim. Each part of that claim has to be examined independently to understand why they would make it. It is not simply that they are claiming to have a unicorn: they are, first, claiming to have history that is exceptionally long, and indeed they do. Second, they are claiming to have modern archaeological or scientific methods that can let them discover things about this history. Third, they are demonstrating that their knoweledge of history corroborates the evidence: they have not made the claim of having the unicorn skeleton itself, note, because that would contradict this, and we (clumsy westerners?) have already remembered the part about a horse with a horn, and do not need reminding, at least yet. Finally, they are showing the world that they are special: in a strange way that (thank god) only works in Korea, this is like a call to Jihad for them. It is an assertion by faith of the korean power that is beyond the natural world: they are superhumans for being korean, and we aren't. and this is very much an internal and external power demonstration at the same time, because if nothing else, the willingness of its population to accept unicorns as fact should give us some secular idea of what they might be capable of in comparison with other extremist ideas, especially given that the bones of Allah have never been discovered, of Jesus are very much in dispute, of Buddha are passed around as relics (with more relics than there ever was Buddha).

In short, they are saying, "we might be poor, but so are the other enemies that beat you, and now we are using their weapon: faith."

snippet about racism.

Spoiler

Racist jokes are easy to make, and there are jokes about any group, but I want regulars here to understand that the racist bits in here are inserted for demonstration of the actual expressed attitudes of many groups here towards each other, and for newbs, I want to make it clear that me giving a translation of the word "grass jelly" into vernacular english doesn't make it cool for you to use that vernacular translation (in this case, "nigger", but- bizarre by the standards of most readers here- almost never applied to Africans). So the descripition of Koreans as angry garlic-eating motherfuckers by the Japanese, for example, or of foul-smelling indians who have melodramatic tastes in color, are not necessarily mine- although, sorry strawhat, too much melodramatic color is right some times, and gets boring after a while, something the barbarian Chinese realized between courses of cat, served up by Thai cooks who stole the cats from China in the first place, cut every serving with their elbows, doubled the price on the bill, and pretended not to understand their oldest trading partner so as to get double price, which they considered well earned for catering to the cultural stereotypes of white people who will never learn anything more than the name of drugs, noodles, or sex positions in their languages.

In other words, think of your school's cafeteria in first grade, and put everybody at the same table (mainland asia) or in chairs around the sides (polynesian islands, Philippines and other archipellagoes, et al) and make everybody tease everybode else about accent or the contents of a lunch box, but nobody brings up religion or politics unless they're trying to eat it- like Afghanistan, or north Korea- and the big consideration the kids next to them have is how to trade something that will make that kid full enough to not swallow bullshit, but small enough to allow him to not accept a book or fossilized narwhal skull as a trade for being 'too big'. There's lots of politicking besides, but this should give you an idea of how racism is used in cultural contexts: it's not that you're better or worse, people can eat cats if they want to (and if they kill the cat first), and everybody smells like dahl after eating it daily for a week or two: but if you brought up skin color in the way that some groups do, you'd either be laughed into eating lunch in the office, or beaten up and left taped to the top of the swing set: Competition is distinctly not the same thing as assertions of superiority based on attributes that are either universal or uncontrollable or correctable.

This post has been edited by Choscura: 03 December 2012 - 04:20 PM

[BenignDesign]

Seriously... if you would write shorter posts, I might be inclined to read one or two of them...

[Choscura]

Short version: Korea + Thailand officially began diplomatic relations 700 years ago, interrupted and temporally ended by disastrous invasion attempt by mongols of Japan, mongols subsequently came to Thailand origins of thai horses trace back to this, repelled by weather + mosquitoes, japanese go to Korea, everybody complains about koreans being ugly (mongols took the pretty genes from their pool) and smelly (japanese refer to them as "angry garlic eating motherfuckers", first word korean attitude towards jap overlords, last is jap response to being resisted as overlords), Thai people took over Thailand (from Mon, south asian/indian group throughout mainland SE Aisa before then), Thai people also took over Taiwan, which used to be full of white people (no shit, aboriginals, but possibly another group between them and Thai settling). Modern asian cultures (and societies, since China's not a culture, according to other asians, as they never developed manners, are xenophobic and arrogant anyway, and don't know how to work or behave unless directed like robots- great for factories, bad everywhere else) make a big deal about every detail of what is said and almost don't care about the message itself, thus: north korea wants us to know the details: it has science + archaeology, illustrious long history- in that order- corroborated by evidence, population that believes in unicorns, willingness to use idiots as weapons a'la september 11, unicorns + history mean they are special snowflakes too, despite technical inferiority, social inferiority to their neighbors, and political inferiority to their only allies.

Also racism is about cultural competition (here), not actually about race. True shit.

This post has been edited by Choscura: 03 December 2012 - 10:06 PM